Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. And to cap off a Month of Pride celebrating and commemorating the LGBTQ community, we're going to hear three stories on today's episode of the podcast.
Our first story is from Micah Truran. The theme of the night was Fresh. Now, Micah's story actually tied for first place at this SLAM. But in true Moth StorySLAM fashion, there can only be one winner. So, Micah's story lost out that night. But we were listening, and we loved what we heard. So, here it is on the podcast. This is Micah Truran, live from Milwaukee.
[applause]
Micah: [00:00:40] So, in my opinion, one of the most underrated Disney feature films is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. [audience chuckles] And it has this little gag in it, where this guy is in this cage, and it tips over and he dances around for a couple of seconds like, “Yay, I'm free,” and then he trips and he lands in the stocks, and then he's stuck again. That's a pretty good metaphor for what my experience with gender has been.
So, I grew up in a really conservative family, obviously, from my opening, very much raised on Disney, [audience chuckles] as well as Bible stories and old movies starring Cary Grant. And all of these things had in common that the guys are the heroes. They're the smart ones, the brave ones, the ones in charge of the story, and the girls are the moms and wives and girlfriends of the heroes.
So, it really didn't take very long for me to decide that the girl category wasn't looking so good, [audience chuckles] and that I wanted to be a boy. [audience chuckles] So, all throughout growing up, I was really feeling pretty uncomfortable as a girl. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I was told growing up, “No, girls don't sit like that. Girls don't dress like that. Girls don't act like that. Girls don't talk like that.” I wouldn't have any student loans to worry about. [audience chuckles]
I never got to do any of the stuff I wanted to do. I didn't get to go to the sleepovers with my guy friends, because I would have been the only girl there. I didn't get to try out for the football team in middle school, because my mom wouldn't let me. And she wouldn't even let me get a razor scooter. [audience chuckles] So, then I came to college. And in college, it was suddenly okay for me to be like, “Hi, I'm a guy.” And everybody was cool with it. Sometimes I had to explain it a few times, but I was like, “Hey, I'm transgender. I'm a guy.”
And eventually, people went with it. But sometimes people had some trouble and it would get really frustrating. It wound up taking up a lot of my energy to just always have to correct people. So, then, eventually I had it settled, most people were getting it. But then, there was like, I felt trapped again, because there was stuff that I would want to wear or do, and it'd be like, "Guys don't wear that. Guys don't do that. Guys don't act that way." I like my singing voice, but it sounds like a girl singing. So, I was stuck again, feeling like I had to work hard to be something.
So, in The Matrix-- [audience laughter] Yeah, I'm big on metaphors. I watch a lot of movies. In The Matrix, there's this scene where he meets the little boy who's bending the spoon, and the kid is like, "There is no spoon." It takes him a while before he actually gets it, but then when it clicks, he can do anything. So, I'd heard in my women and gender studies classes, "Oh, gender's just performative. It's a social construct." I was like, "Okay, yeah, whatever. It's still a pain in the ass." [audience chuckles]
And then, there’s this one day, it's in the summer, I've got my Mohawk dyed bright blue. I'm feeling awesome. I ride to the store on my razor scooter, which I can have now, because I'm a grown up. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
I pull this kind of badass skid stop right in front of the store. [audience laughter] There are these three kids, like two boys and a girl standing there. They're just looking at me like I'm a rockstar. [audience chuckles] And one of the boys says, "Wow, he's cool." And the girl grins and says, "That's a girl." That was the first time in years that I'd been called a girl, and it didn't piss me off. [audience chuckles] So, that was when it really clicked that it didn't matter if it was something a guy did or something a girl did. It didn't matter if somebody thought that I was being a boy or thought that I was being a girl. None of those rules mattered as long as I was just being me.
There is no spoon, there is no gender, there are no rules. So, once that clicked, I just decided to wear whatever, do whatever, be whatever. I used to worry about gender all the time, and now that I stopped following the rules, I don't even think about it. And it's like a whole new world is open. It's a fresh start, and I'm happier and more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been in my life.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:06:46] Micah attends University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is double majoring in Psychology and Women and Gender Studies. They enjoy reading, writing stories and playing video games. Micah is still riding a razor scooter too. And just last week, they had a bad wipeout, just as their mom was worried, they would, road rash and everything. But Micah was back on the scooter before you knew it. To see a picture of Micah and their scooter, visit our website, themoth.org.
So, it's often said that everyone has two families, the one that we're born into and the one that we choose. Up next, we head to Melbourne to hear a story from Kiri Bear that she shared at a StorySLAM there. The theme of the night was Karma.
[applause]
Kiri: [00:07:35] So, some people have this notion that we choose our parents before we're born. Our little baby souls are looking down, [chuckles] waiting for the right people to jump on board with. It makes me wonder if my son chose me.
When my partner was pregnant, I was terrified. I was sure that I was way too selfish to be a mother. I was really worried that I was going to resent our unborn son or our son when he was born. [audience laughter] But when she gave birth to him and I held him in my arms for the first time, I was like, “Ah, I get it. I'm going to give you everything and I'll never regret it for a moment.” [sobs]
When my son was two, he started childcare. And he also mysteriously started calling me by my first name. [audience chuckles] My partner twigged to what was going down. And she went into that childcare center and explained to them that she's Mummy and I'm Mama, and they are to call us by our names, Mummy and Mama, and not by our first names. It's very important when your family is in the minority that people give you the title that recognizes who you are.
When my son was three, my relationship was on the rocks, and I had to go to Sydney for work for a week. It was the longest that I'd ever been away from him. I came back with all the weight of the impending doom of what was going to happen in our relationship. The day after I got home, I had my son in the bath. And with all of that anxiety behind me, I said, "Oh, I've missed you so much. This is the longest I've been apart from you, since you were born. Did you miss me?" He didn't miss a beat. He said, "No, Mama. You're always in my heart." [audience aww]
By the time my son was four, my partner and I had split up and I'd moved out, but I was living not too far away. Then one day, walking my son home to his other mother's house, he said to me, "Mummy really misses me when I'm at your house?" I said, "Yeah, I really miss you when you're not at my house." He said, "Mummy really, really misses me.” “Do you think Mummy misses you more than I do?" “Mummy said that she's my real mummy and you're not my real mummy.” [sobs] I scooped my heart off the ground and said, "Oh, that's interesting. [audience chuckles] What do you think about that?" He paused for a moment, "I think you're my real mummy, and Mummy's my real mummy." I said, "That's good. That's what I think too."
When my son was five, I picked him up from school one day and he had conjunctivitis. I took him to the doctor and got the eye drops. And he was terrified of the eye drops. My new girlfriend, who is a former nurse, said, "I'll hold him down. You do the eye drops." [audience laughter] But me, in my infinite wisdom, said, "No, no, I've got this. I'm going to negotiate." [audience chuckles] I negotiated, I cajoled, I begged. And an hour later, I found myself holding him down and trying to get the eye drops.
He was shaking and squirming like a wild animal and he yelled, "If you don't let me go, I'm not going to call you Mommy anymore." I stepped back. "Well, what you call me is your choice. But right now, I'm responsible for you, and I have to look after you and I have to give you these eye drops. After I give you the eye drops, I can take you home and you never have to see me again." Not my finest moment. [sobs]
My son's face fell. He was a mask of grief. As a parent, I'd always considered what he thought about me didn't really matter. My job is to show up. My job is to love him. What he does is completely up to him. But in that moment, I found out how much my son loves me. [sobs] Because the thought of never seeing me again was devastating. I called my girlfriend in, she held him down, I did the eye drops. [audience laughter] My son and I were very tender with each other after that. So, I don't know if we all choose our parents, but I know that my son chose me and the bond that we have is bigger than biology.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:14:04] Kiri Bear is an artist, poet and freelance facilitator from Melbourne, Australia. She lives in a rambunctious share house full of simple, living creative types on the hunt for ways to live closer to the earth and to their own hearts. In her spare time, she cultivates a peaceful way of being and plays Dungeons & Dragons with her seven-year-old son.
Our last story today is one from the archives. And it's a favorite of ours. This is from Gil Reyes. And he told this story at the Bay Area Science Festival back in 2013. That was a really fun night. The theme of the night was the Big Bang. Here's Gil Reyes.
[applause]
Gil: [00:14:46] I'm sure the woman on the other end of the phone identified herself as being from the clinic I'd been to the day before. Maybe she said her name. Maybe she asked if I was sitting down. I don't remember any of that. In my memory, I just pick up the phone and this voice says, "Go immediately to the emergency room. Your kidneys are failing."
As I get up and get dressed, there's this voice in the back of my head just saying, this is absurd. I'm in my 20s. I'm invincible. I'm immortal. I don't even need health insurance. [audience chuckles] I don't even have health insurance. Sure, I'd been feeling bad for a while. But my swollen ankles, that was because I was waiting tables, working double shifts, trying to save up money. Not because my body wasn't processing water waste right. And these splitting headaches, that was because I was really stressed out trying to get into grad schools. And not because your kidneys regulate your blood pressure.
When I finally collapsed a few days before, I didn't have any more excuses. That was when my boyfriend Sean made me go to the clinic. Sean and I had been dating for a year, living together for a few months. It was moving a little bit fast, but either of us could go to grad school at any minute, so it was fine. We had a day-by-day mentality, and maybe we were keeping each other just at arm's length. In fact, I was able to convince him not to go with me to the emergency room. I mean, why should we both sit around all day for some doctors to tell me that's not what it is, that it's something else, that it's something that can be fixed with a pill, right? So, I went alone. Terrified, but hiding it well.
This trait of mine, this crazy independence, maybe at best stems from when I came out to my southern mother from Alabama, my Baptist mom, my Catholic-Hispanic dad from Texas, growing up a teenager in Kentucky. If you're thinking this didn't go well, you're right. [audience laughter] [chuckles] There were bibles manifesting from nowhere, [audience laughter] even though I'd been to church more than they had throughout my life. And there was screaming and yelling. I left that night thinking I'm one of the damned. Well, because they told me, you're going to hell. We didn't speak for a while, over a year.
When we began to try to put our relationship back together, the damage was pretty done. I mean, how close can you get when there's this whole part of your life that somebody wants nothing to do with? I remember once my dad out of the blue said, "I never want to meet anyone you're seeing. I don't ever want you to bring anybody home." But as my emergency room visit became a 10-day stay in the hospital, I had to let a lot of people know where I was. In fact, that hospital room is where my parents first met Sean.
I learned my kidneys were functioning at less than 10%. I learned that I would probably have to go on dialysis. If you don't know much about dialysis, it's a way to live. It's not a great way to live. It's not pleasant, it's very time consuming, it's expensive. No, what you want in this situation is a living donor, a kidney donor. You could get on the national transplant list. That is going to take time, maybe years, waiting with a bag packed by the door. And cadaver kidneys have other issues with them, maybe they're not the best choice. If you can get a living donor though, usually family, somebody who's a perfect match, that's the ideal situation.
Well, my relationship with my parents had left me a little bit wounded. I had a little bit of trouble maybe trusting people. This is one of the things I was bad at in my 20s. It used to be at the top of the list. Now, the top of the list was kidney function. But it was still up there. And I had this trouble trusting people and accepting help. And if you have trouble accepting help, imagine trying to accept a kidney. [audience chuckles] People stepped up to get tested. My dad, despite our differences, my mother couldn't. My best friend, his dad, friends from college, high school, work. And there was one more person who really wanted to get tested. Sean. Talk about a commitment. [audience chuckles]
He eventually wore me down. He said, "Whatever happens, if we're together or not, in the future, if I can do this for you now, I want to." And as the months began to pass and I did go on dialysis, and my father was disqualified as a donor because of kidney stones, I went on Social Security and food stamps, because I was too weak to work. And friends were disqualified for various reasons. And I wasn't going to be going to grad school. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going from 20 to 80, what seemed like overnight, comparing blood pressure medicines with my grandmother. [audience chuckles]
I spent a lot of time alone, sleeping mostly. But I remember this one day, I made it out to the park, and I was sitting alone. It was a cool day. It was a fall day. I was praying, meditating, considering this entire process. I found this really strange peace that's hard to describe. I found this kind of acceptance of myself and where I'd been, and I thought it's fine. If this is what it is. If that was it, I'm okay with that. I can die in my 20s. And I stopped praying to get better. And I thought about the thing that I'd want if I could pray for one thing. It was to feel worthy of that love that I hadn't felt for so long. And I stopped asking for time and thought about time well spent.
It was December when Sean called me from work and said, "I have an early Christmas present for you." He was as good a match as my dad. He said, "Would you let me give you a kidney?" And I said, “Yes.” We spent time well. Sean's a big language geek, so we named it. [audience laughter] Things work better when you name them. Rene, after the renal system. [audience laughter] And Renatus for rebirth. We would tell people we're having a kidney. [audience laughter] And our friends convinced us to have a party. [audience chuckles] We had a kidney shower. [audience laughter]
Sean really wanted to register, but I thought that might be going a little far. [audience laughter] Nevertheless, people brought us gifts, pajamas for recovering and bad movies. Sean loves bad movies. We played games like Kidney Bean Bingo [audience chuckles] and Pin the Kidney on Gil. [audience laughter] We got this big red velvet sheet cake shaped like a kidney. [audience chuckles] We wore medical masks and we cut it together and fed each other pieces and took lots of pictures.
And the day of the surgery came in May, and they had us both ready. Our gurneys ready to go. We were there, surrounded by Sean's family and my family. My parents were there. And my mother started crying. We never talk about this, but we cry the same way. We scrunch up our cheeks in the same way and we hold back those tears. I can see it in her face when she's trying to work something out. She leans down and takes Sean's hand and says, "Thank you." I think she's seeing him differently and maybe she's seeing me differently.
The surgery goes great, and we recover together for weeks and weeks in a strange little honeymoon. [audience chuckles] A year later, we get a card in the mail. Now, it's not unusual for my mother to send cards. She sends cards for the strangest occasions, even though they live 15 minutes away. [audience chuckles] But this one was addressed to Sean, and it said what a blessing he is and it recognized our anniversary. They asked us to go to dinner with them like couples do with their parents. I never asked for any proof, because you're supposed to rely on faith. But I have a family where I have parents and a partner, a perfect match where I had a boyfriend, and a 10-inch scar across my abdomen to remind me every day that I am loved. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:24:57] Gil Reyes works in two different theaters in Louisville. He's the director of development at StageOne Family Theatre and also co-artistic director of Theatre 502. He and Sean also live in Louisville with their dog, Herman.
That does it for this week's episode of The Moth podcast. But we know there are so many more stories and shades of pride within the LGBTQIA+ community, and we know we haven't heard them yet. So, what we'd love for you to do is share them with us. Visit our site, themoth.org, for a list of upcoming StorySLAMs. There's going to be one near you. And if there isn't or maybe you can't make it out, just pitch us a two-minute version of your story online. You can do it right there on the site or you can call us at 877-799-M-O-T-H. That's 1-877-799-M-O-T-H. We can't wait to hear from you. And until then, have a story-worthy week.
Mooj: [00:25:53] Dan Kennedy is the author of the books, Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with The Moth.
Dan: [00:26:03] Podcast production by Timothy Lou Ly. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.